Category: Bible

Reason #8 Why a Sinner Ought to Turn to God without Delay

Silva

I think one of humanity’s biggest gifts and biggest burdens is our ability to manufacture expectations.  I’ve never met a person who didn’t have them.  All the trouble that I’ve caused I’ve done in the service of my expectations.  We lay them on each other all the time.  They are said, unsaid, written, unwritten, reminded, forgotten and above all, pursued.

We don’t just lay them on each other: we preeminently have them about God.  We expect that He’ll make our lives easier, that He’ll answer our prayers as we pray them, that He’ll keep us from harm, that He’ll arrange only good and not bad for us, etc.  Then, when He doesn’t!  Oh my, has God failed us.  The reality of this situation is that leveling expectations upon God and then holding Him to them is akin to my 8 year old doing the same with me.  Seriously.

This is very clear when it comes to ultimate issues: God should see that I’m basically good; He should not be too hard on me simply because I’m human; God should realize His standards are too high…blah blah blah.  Baxter brings this thinking to the fore:

Do you think to bring down Christ and heaven to your own terms and to be saved hereafter with less ado?  Sure, you cannot be so foolish: for God will be still the same; and Christ the same; and his promise has still the same condition, which He will never change; and godliness will be the same and as much against your carnal interest hereafter as it is now.

If you cannot leave sin now, how shall you leave it then?  It will still be as sweet to your flesh as now; or if one grow stale by the decay of nature, another that is worse will spring up in its stead and though the acts abate they will all live still at the root for sin was never mortified by age.  So that if ever you will turn you may best turn now.

Our expectations we will always have with us but the opportunity to lay hold of Christ by faith and be saved from our sins is here one moment and gone the next.   Do not delay to turn to Christ.

Pastor Gabe

Reason #7: Why a Sinner ought to Turn to God without Delay

Silva

Feel the Heat.  Ever wondered where that phrase came from: “feel the heat”?  This is one of several we have in English that capture the same sentiment.  What about “hot as hell” or “snowball’s chance in hell”?  Like “feel the heat,” these are undoubtedly of Christian origin.  There’s something in us that recognizes that these phrases have a real place in our thinking – or they should.

For a Christian, “heat” equals God’s judgment.  We could be talking either about some kind of temporal pressure (that often makes us sweat!) or the final judgment for all that we’ve done in this life.  The heat of God’s anger at sin or the pictures of hell’s heat in the Bible are reserved for those who look at God’s extraordinary gift of His Son with disdain.

There’s only one way to avoid the hot displeasure of God and the hopeless torment of hell: believe on the Lord Jesus Christ.  Yet, to fail to do so, is serious.  Here’s what Baxter says:

Your delaying is a vile abuse of Christ and the Holy Ghost, and may so far provoke Him to leave you to yourself, and then your are past help.  If you delight so to trample on your crucified Lord and will so long put Him to it by refusing His grace and grieving His Spirit, what can you expect but that he should turn away in wrath and utterly forsake you.

Implicitly we know that if we had a wonderful benefactor who made a stupendous offer to us in this life that we regularly and scornfully ignored, he would be right to remove his offer.  Where does that impulse come from?

Do not delay, turn to Christ and live.

Pastor Gabe

Reason #6: Why a Sinner Ought to Turn To God without Delay

Silva

This weekend in morning worship, we looked at the concept of “foolishness.”  There are things that we all consider foolish – but no one has the same list.  Inside Christendom we have a unified list of what is foolish; of course, outside Christendom, there’s another list.  Among the former we’d place sexual promiscuity of all types; among the latter, abstinence.  So, logger heads is inevitable at some point.

One of those areas of inside – outside disagreement would be about the personal enemy of God and His people, the Devil.  Inside, we know he’s real, fierce and relentless.  Outside, he’s a suped-up evil villian from a superhero comic strip.  Even gross wickedness outside Christendom the preference would be to attribute mental illness than to supernatural evil.  Richard Baxter reminds all who would listen that to disbelieve in a personal enemy of all mankind is to bury your head in the sand.

Moreover, your delaying gives great advantage to the Tempter.  If you would presently turn and forsake your sins, and enter into a faithful covenant with God, the devil would be almost out of hope and the very heart of his temptations would be broken….But, as long as you delay, you keep him in heart and hope; he has time to strengthen his prison and fetters and to renew his snares; and if one temptation serve him not, has time to try another and another; as if you would stand as a mark for Satan to shoot at as long as he pleases.

It is a well-known and well-worn trick of the Adversary to convince people that he really doesn’t exist and he really is no threat.  It is folly to believe him.  Turn to God immediately and live.

Pastor Gabe